The Gudauskas Bros camp Oz’s East Coast

Pat, Dane and Tanner Gudauskas are California’s three favourite sons. Golden hair, white teeth and “Hells yeah!” attitudes to boot, they’re a trio of smiles and good times. In textbook Gudang style, the gang’ve spent their time since the Quik Pro, Gold Coast, camping out along the east coast of Australia. The boys have been shooting for a Vans surf film, which you’ll find out more about real soon. Stab called the sole WT surfer Pat to find out about the trip. Reaching Pat was a gamble, as the bros’ whole crew all share the same Australian number. Over the last two days, three different people answered before Pat was available to talk.

Stab: So, the run of camping’s reached its end?
Pat Gudauskas: Yeah, we’re staying at the Swiss Grand Hotel in Bondi for the night. We ditched the tent. We actually donated it to people in the last camping ground we were at, which was in Narrabeen. We leave tomorrow for West Oz, so we decided to spend our last night over this side (of Oz) in a hotel, to crescendo our month in the tent.

Tell me about your tent set-up. We went to that, ah, not K-Mart… what’s the other one? Is it ‘Circle Mart’ or something? Some Target-looking thing?

That place is actually called Target. Yeah! We just got sleeping bags, tents and these little inflatable mattresses. It was pretty classic. They were pretty crappy and we flooded the things multiple times. We got squalls in Narrabeen for like, a week.

Where else did you camp, aside from Narrabeen? Well we kinda started up there on the Gold Coast, went to Byron Bay, Yamba, Forster, Narrabeen, Ulladulla… we kinda went everywhere. There were a few random spots too. We kinda did the whole coast – we figured we’d never been here before, so we may as well. We were psyched. The best one… I think Forster was bullshit.

Pretty cheap way to do it? Well it wasn’t as cheap as we thought (laughs). We were paying like 50 bucks for the night at each campsite, so we figured we may as well be getting a hotel room. But whatever, it’s a fun way to do it, you can just pop up anywhere.

You surfed some heavy spots like Shipsterns and Ours while you were here. First, tell us about Shipsterns. It was sick – our first time down there. We got the call from Mark (Mathews), so we sorted out some step-ups and did the bolt from Ulladulla and just charged down. I think it gets a lot bigger, but it was pretty mental. It was a perfect intro for us, though. I ended up riding one of Matt Banting’s old old Pipe guns.

And Ours? The day we surfed Ours, we posted up in the bush, in the National Park, ’cause we didn’t know where it was. We had no fucken clue, we were just pulled-over in the bush, then in the morning we couldn’t find the wave. When we found it, we were freaking. We didn’t think it was surfable. We rolled up and there was no one out, so we were like “Oh man, are you kidding? Is that it? Holy shit.” Then some of the boys rolled up and were like, “Come on, let’s jump in!”

What sucked the most about camping? Definitely the mosquitos. They were gnarly through the whole mid-coast area, like Forster. We were getting mowed by ’em. That, and all the rain. We had one night, when we partied huge, came in and Dane woke up literally four inches underwater. Other than that, having so much luggage. We’d pick up everyday and go, “Where do we wanna go?” and then have to take the tent down, pack everything up, then set back up at the next spot. But you get in the rhythm.

Ah, good, I’ve been looking for an excuse to use this word – did you get good at erecting the tent? Dude we got so gnarly at it – by the end it was five minutes, up and down.

Did you roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories? We should have, but we couldn’t have fires anywhere. The campsites are all to scared of burning down the forest. We were kinda bummed, ’cause in California you can just campfire-up wherever you are. So we didn’t bring out the marshmallows per se, but there was some Griswold moments going down (For ‘Griswold’ See National Lampoons Vacation). Andrew Doheny was with us for a while and he locked us out of our RV one night, in the pissing rain, so we had to break into our own RV. That was awesome.